History CruelTwistEnding / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' has the episode "The Tale of the Chameleon", featuring Tia and Tamera Mowry as the protagonist and her evil clone. The episode ends with the girl's friend being forced to decide [[SpotTheImposter which one is the real person]] - and choosing wrongly. The clone keeps her human body, while the girl is changed into a chameleon and left to drown at the bottom of a well.

** "Family Man": An accident somehow switches the souls of an auditor and family man and a fleeing serial killer called "The Family Man", [[FreakyFridayFlip trapping them in each other's bodies]]. The protagonist finds himself staring down the death penalty and a world that despises him, while his family is in the hands of a monster (who, while he claims he wants to look after "his" family, is clearly a ticking time bomb from his psychosis). When the protagonist finally escapes, he makes his way to his house and engages in mortal combat with the impostor. And then he's shot dead by a policeman. But wait...! The auditor finds himself back in his own body: the process is reversed. He's saved! And then...it turns out the impostor has already murdered the protagonist's wife and son and assaulted (and probably raped) his daughter. The daughter survives and fingers him as he breaks down in sheer horror and despair. He's escaped one level of hell only to plunge headlong into an even crueler one, and there's no escape from this. One of the proposed titles of this trope was the "Family Man Twist", by the way.

** In one episode, a woman is sent back in time to kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler as a baby. She struggles with the reality of actually killing an infant, but in the end, jumps off a bridge with the child, killing them both. Little Adolf's nanny, unwilling to admit to her employers what happened, replaces him with another baby. The implication is that this whole action [[StableTimeLoop was part of our timeline]], and the replacement baby was the [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct actual Hitler from our history]].

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': Perhaps the best illustration of the difference between a KarmicTwistEnding and a cruel-twist ending are two episodes with virtually the same plot: a man manages to apparently become the last man on Earth but cannot enjoy it. (In the second case the man finds he finally has time to read all the books he wants -- until he breaks his glasses.) It's the same twist in both episodes, but in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E63TheMindAndTheMatter The Mind and the Matter]]", the man is a MisanthropeSupreme who wills everyone else away, making [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor his eventual fate karmic justice]]. In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", however, the man is a timid man who is ridiculed by his wife and boss for reading books, and who only survives a nuclear holocaust because he locked himself in a bank vault as the only way he could get some peace. In this case, the world screws him over just to be mean. Website/{{Wikipedia}} claims that he was being punished for [[LonersAreFreaks being antisocial]], and for daring to think that humanity being wiped out had a positive side. Make of that what you will.

** "A Little Peace and Quiet": A woman finds a pearl necklace that can stop time, like in the old TZ, but uses it to stop time immediately before Soviet missiles impact her town, leaving her with a choice of being permanently stuck in a frozen world or starting time again only to be vaporized.
** "A Small Talent For War": An alien ambassador admonishes humanity for their primitive, war-like ways, and threatens annihilation if humans can't show greater potential. The UN achieves a treaty for world peace, but it turns out the aliens wanted ''greater potential for violence.''

** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S7E3ANewLife A New Life]]": This episode's premise may remind some fans of Shyamalan's ''Film/TheVillage''. Two married couples join a cult that resembles Puritanism, because their lives have become unfulfilling. The problem is, no one remembered how they reached the forest they were brought to, because the cult leader knocked everyone unconscious en route. At first, the protagonist seemed okay with his new life until the cult leader borrows his child and brands him. After the protagonist gets his son back, he panics and convinces his wife to flee from the village with him. Soon, they realize the forest's edge is blocked by a force field, and stay on the run, but their branded child was used as a tracking device. As a result, the couple was discovered by the cult leader and captured. For fleeing, the protagonist would be executed, so he helped convince his male friend (played by Jeremy Sisto) to help him escape and de-activate the force field. The plan goes well at first until the two of them find a teleporter. The protagonist volunteers to enter, while his friend protects his wife. After entering the teleporter, the protagonist was transported to a dark room with several robed people. The people in robes? Oh they're aliens. They also claim that the forest is ''inside a spaceship'', they've already left Earth, and they plan to use religion to encourage people to breed for the next 500 years...which is when they'll reach their destination and use the humans as ''slave labor''. Of course, the protagonist gets killed for knowing too much, though his partner met a grisly end. The cult leader burns him at the stake to urge people not to rebel. Even better? His wife watches him get roasted.

** "Abra Cadaver": In revenge for a prank that ruined his career, surgeon Marty poisons his younger brother Carl and injects him with a drug before he dies. Carl's body is hung on a meat hook, drained of blood, and scalped in an anatomy demonstration...[[AndIMustScream all while he's fully conscious, yet unable to move, speak, or feel anything]]. It's an elaborate prank staged by Marty to demonstrate how his drug preserves brain function after death. However, Carl suffers a heart attack in shock; Marty injects him with a larger dose. The drug works, but Carl is left helplessly witnessing his own real autopsy. The kicker? Contrary to Marty's previous claim, the sense of touch isn't the first to go--''it's the last''.
** "Three's a Crowd": A man believes that his wife and best friend are having an affair, leading him to eventually murder the both of them in a drunken rage. But just as he attempts getting rid of her body, he stumbles right into a surprise party that she and the friend had planned for him. And the reason? All to announce that they were going to be parents. So thanks to a misunderstanding, the man has now murdered his wife, his best friend, ''and'' his unborn child.

** "Recap/BlackMirrorShutUpAndDance" had some people who were manipulated into doing things (from simple delivery to a DuelToTheDeath) to prevent their secrets from being leaked online. After the main character successfully completes his final, bloody task, they still have the data released to humiliate them one last time. Interestingly, the episode also seems to aim this trope at the ''viewer''. At first we're lead to believe that the teenager protagonist was an innocent kid who just happened to be recorded as he was having ADateWithRosiePalms. At the end it's revealed he's actually a paedophile who was caught watching child pornography.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' has "A Little Peace and Quiet", in which a woman finds a pearl necklace that can stop time, like in the old TZ, but uses it to stop time immediately before Soviet missiles impact her town, leaving her with a choice of being permanently stuck in a frozen world or starting time again only to be vaporized.

* In a ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' time travel episode, John & Co finally manage to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong and return to the future. Unfortunately,the best alternate they managed to create still led to a group of peaceful women and children being horribly slaughtered, when they'd survived in the original timeline.

** "Lotsa Luck": After trying to prevent an evil leprechaun named [[JackassGenie Seamus]] from stealing his soul, Greg uses the last of his three wishes to wish that he never met the leprechaun, thinking that this'll undo all the damage. However, it's rendered moot because Seamus reveals that Greg's soul belongs to him anyway because his own great grandfather offered Seamus his grandson's soul anyway as tribute so he could keep his own. The episode ends on Seamus lunging at Greg to [[YourSoulIsMine rip his soul out by force]].

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' was so fond of this ending that the viewer could assume any given episode would end this way--and be right more often than not. It was the original TropeNamer because of how often it was used. (In contrast, the original 60s ''[[Series/TheOuterLimits1963 Outer Limits]]'' had a higher proportion of bittersweet or even positive endings.) Some notable examples:
** "Tempests": In order to save a space colony, a man must figure out which of the two realities between which he's switching are real, the [[LotusEaterMachine seemingly perfect one]] or the darker one. He makes the "right" choice - and we find out that ''both'' worlds are {{Lotus Eater Machine}}s. His real situation is much worse: he's cocooned by giant spiders and slowly being eaten, and as a result of his failure everyone presumably dies.
** "The Deprogrammers": A group of humans beat alien brainwashing and eventually manage to take down the villain -- [[LetsYouAndHimFight just as a rival alien had arranged]], as it turns out. Once they've done his dirty work for him, they're turned into ''his'' {{Brainwashed}} slaves.
** "Hearts And Minds": A group of soldiers fight the good fight against bizarre invading insectoid beasts, only to find that the "medication" given to them by their leaders is making them see their actually-human enemies as bugs. They lay down their weapons and try to talk to the enemies...who promptly kill them all, being under the influence of similar drugs and seeing our protagonists as monsters.
** "Straight And Narrow": [[SchoolForScheming An exclusive private school]] brainwashes its students for use as mercenaries, similar to the movie ''Film/DisturbingBehavior'', which it predates. The one student who is immune to the process manages to escape and tell authorities -- who prove to be alumni, and drag him back to undergo the procedure (now corrected to work on the likes of him) as the assassination he'd tried to prevent is successfully carried out.
** "Quality of Mercy": A captured space pilot comforts the girl he's imprisoned with when the aliens start turning her into one of them. To give her hope, he says there's a secret reserve force waiting to strike at the aliens. Just what she wanted to hear, because she was a spy, and they're changing her ''back'' into an alien.
** The writers continued that story in "The Light Brigade" just to squash any hope the viewers had. Due to the aforementioned episode, the aliens begin winning the war. In a last-ditch effort, humanity tries to surprise attack the alien homeworld with a planet-killing WMD. The fleet is ambushed and the ship carrying the device is crippled, and everyone is killed immediately or knocked unconscious and given a fatal dose of radiation which will kill them soon. The hero manages to unmask a traitor, get to the destination and drop the bomb before his ship can be boarded. Unfortunately, the ship had been ''turned around'' whilst everyone was unconscious - the hero has just heroically ensured that the bomb was dropped on Earth!
** "Dead Man's Switch": A fleet of alien spaceships are seen heading toward Earth. Knowing they might be evil, a Doomsday plan with a DeadMansSwitch is prepared, with five people in individual bunkers sharing the responsibility to prevent the doomsday plan from being enacted (should it become unnecessary) by regularly pressing a button to keep the doomsday device from turning on. The five people in the bunkers are gradually killed off in variety of ways. The brief hope for peace is extinguished when a second fleet of colonization ships is found and the button pressers lose all contact. They die in their separate bunkers one by one until the last one remains. He finally decides to let it happen when he gets a message from his commander telling him they defeated the aliens with a new weapon. He stops the DoomsdayDevice at the last second and is told to keep pushing the button until they can disarm it. The last scene shows the aliens who used the commander as a puppet eating his brains over the glowing red ruins of DC.
** "Mind Over Matter": A man creates an AI machine to reach into a female coma patient's mind to help wake her up. It's a living dream and he falls in love with her cute avatar in the dream. Occasionally during this therapy they are attacked by a grimy evil looking version of the woman he believes is the AI attempting to take over. In the end he strangles the evil woman. The patient then dies because the cute avatar was the AI all along.
** "In Our Own Image": An android programmed to be a soldier who wants to live a life of peace escapes from the lab and gets a ride from a random lady he carjacks. She helps him escape and attempt to get the items he needs to remove his safeguards and be free. At the last second before he's truly free, she reveals she was one of his programmers and shuts him down. She wanted to see what he could do before she stopped him. Unfortunately for her and humanity, he had identified her beforehand, turns himself back on, kills her, and starts a robot uprising. This may also count as him giving a KarmicTwistEnding. [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters If humanity is going to act like this,]] [[DeadlyEuphemism then he needs to teach them a lesson.]]
** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E20Nightmare Nightmare]]": A team for special mission is captured and interrogated on their mission to place a DoomsdayDevice on their foe's home planet. The aliens are interrogating them about the mission and the device and attempting to reverse engineer the device. The creator is one of the persons being interrogated, and in going over how the device is triggered activates it with an override to prevent it from being disarmed. At this point it's revealed it's all been an elaborate simulation to see how they would stand up under stress and [[EarthAllAlong they've been on Earth the entire time]]. Since they've trained so hard with the bomb, they had to use the real bomb with an inactive trigger to simulate it correctly. The creator noticed and fixed it as part of her manual override. Cue EarthShatteringKaboom. This example shows the contrast between the original series and the revival. "Nightmare" is a remake of [[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E10Nightmare an episode]] from [[Series/TheOuterLimits1963 the original series]] which had a similar plot with the "it was a simulation" twist at the end, but didn't have the whole thing with the bomb.
** "The Surrogate": A woman becomes a surrogate to a family via a private medical facility. She joins a support group for surrogate mothers there and becomes suspicious. Standard TownWithADarkSecret plot, right? Suspecting her baby will be a monster or something else she contacts an FBI agent who at first thinks she's crazy. The actual babies are never seen, and the surrogate mothers don't like to talk about them afterwards. When the big day comes and the FBI agent busts in to stop the evil birth...Only to discover the entire thing was a breeding operation for aliens. The alien's birth occurs when the alien growing in her womb eats all of her except her skin. And it's still hungry for more, ending with the FBI agent getting eaten too.
** "Gettysburg": A time traveler sends three young men at a [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Battle of Gettysburg]] reenactment back to the actual battle. One of the young men was a Southern fanatic who thought the South should have won and the battle was glorious. Being in the real battle under an insane commander dying of meningitis disabuses him of the notion. The time traveler sought to teach him that {{Aesop}}, because otherwise he would shoot [[HarsherInHindsight the first black U.S. President in 2013]] when the president spoke at Gettysburg due to his Southern sympathies. The time traveler, however, dropped his device and the insane commander accidentally activated it, causing him to be transported to the future [[YouCantFightFate where he then shoots the president while he attempts to shoot the Lincoln reenactor.]]
** "A New Life": This episode's premise may remind some fans of Shyamalan's ''Film/TheVillage''. Two married couples join a cult that resembles Puritanism, because their lives have become unfulfilling. The problem is, no one remembered how they reached the forest they were brought to, because the cult leader knocked everyone unconscious en route. At first, the protagonist seemed okay with his new life until the cult leader borrows his child and brands him. After the protagonist gets his son back, he panics and convinces his wife to flee from the village with him. Soon, they realize the forest's edge is blocked by a force field, and stay on the run, but their branded child was used as a tracking device. As a result, the couple was discovered by the cult leader and captured. For fleeing, the protagonist would be executed, so he helped convince his male friend (played by Jeremy Sisto) to help him escape and de-activate the force field. The plan goes well at first until the two of them find a teleporter. The protagonist volunteers to enter, while his friend protects his wife. After entering the teleporter, the protagonist was transported to a dark room with several robed people. The people in robes? Oh they're aliens. They also claim that the forest is ''inside a spaceship'', they've already left Earth, and they plan to use religion to encourage people to breed for the next 500 years...which is when they'll reach their destination and use the humans as ''slave labor''. Of course, the protagonist gets killed for knowing too much, though his partner met a grisly end. The cult leader burns him at the stake to urge people not to rebel. Even better? His wife watches him get roasted.
** "Breaking Point": A guy makes a time machine and travels a few days into the future, but finds out his wife is dead. Horrified, he returns to the present and tries to protect and warn her. His wife refuses to believe his stories of time travel, and eventually, he loses his temper and accidentally kills her. Anguished, declaring himself a monster, he decides she would have been better off without him, so he travels back to the day they met and kills his past self before he met her, erasing himself from existence. It was all for nothing. In the new timeline, it turned out that his wife had been contemplating suicide and meeting him that fateful day had saved her.
** "First Anniversary": Two best friends are both married to kind, loving women who look like supermodels, so they think life is good. But one day, one of them goes nuts, claims that the women are monsters, then commits suicide. After the funeral, his friend is baffled, until he starts to feel revulsion whenever he's around the girls (when he tries to kiss his wife, he smells and tastes something nasty). He fears that he's losing his mind, until the girls feel they have no choice but to confess. They are really aliens that crash landed on Earth. Since they can't leave, they decided to blend in and live the rest of their lives peacefully as human women. The reason his friend called them monsters and that he's feeling disgusted by them is that prolonged contact with them causes the person to develop an immunity to their {{Glamour}}. His wife tries to persuade him that no matter what they look like, they are still the nice women they befriended and fell in love with. Sadly, when he becomes completely immune to the illusion, [[BrownNote their true form is so hideous]] that [[GoMadFromTheRevelation he suffers a complete mental breakdown]]. The women move on and seduce two new guys, meaning the cycle will repeat itself roughly once a year.
** "The Grid": A man on a road trip stops at another city and finds that an evil organization has installed the buildings with antennas that emit a mind-controlling signal as a sort of TakeOverTheWorld plot. Since the protagonist is immune, the brainwashed citizens are ordered to kill him. He escapes and returns to his hometown, intending to call the cops, only to find more antennas. His brainwashed wife shoots him.
** "The Human Factor": On the first ever colony on Ganymede, a robot suddenly rigs the reactor to blow up. The robot explains that since HumansAreTheRealMonsters, its logical course of action is to destroy the colony and prevent humanity from expanding beyond Earth. The crew manages to deactivate the robot and save the reactor, though all but one die in the process. The survivor receives a message from Earth. WorldWarIII broke out, and nukes have wiped out a lot of the planet (including the survivor's family). A shuttle carrying the President and other officials is heading for Ganymede and will arrive in a few months. In despair, the survivor re-rigs the reactor to blow and turns the robot back on. He tells the robot it was right, then offers to play chess to pass the time until the colony is blown to kingdom come (though this one skirts KarmicTwistEnding a bit).
*** It turns into an outright cruel twist ending if you accept it as a true sequel to "Phobos Rising" instead of just another ClipShow episode attempt for ArcWelding unrelated episodes. Said previous episode had a true KarmicTwistEnding, as the Martian colonies destroyed each other thanks to rampant paranoia in the wake of a catastrophic event that ended up with the two factions declaring a truce, and just to twist the knife in further, the general giving the news to the sole survivors of each colony tells them that all of Earth is looking to Martian colonies as a symbol and example of cooperation and solidarity.
** "Ripper": In VictorianLondon, a man goes on the trail of notorious serial killer UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper. He eventually discovers that the Ripper is actually an evil {{Body Surf}}ing alien. While it is in the body of an old woman, he fights and stabs it, only for the alien to exit the body and escape. The police arrive and arrest the protagonist, assuming that ''he'' is the Ripper. The alien, in a new body, visits the protagonist in the asylum and promises to find his family and kill them before leaving.
** "Blank Slate": A man with amnesia is pursued by mysterious agents for the device he's carrying. A woman is caught up in the events and teams up with the man. While on the run, they slowly fall in love. Unfortunately, when his memories come back, it turns out that he was working with the bad guys before. [[AmnesiacDissonance Reverting to his original evil personality]], he betrays the woman and returns the device.
** "Birthright": The protagonist believes he has thwarted an alien invasion...only for the taxi driver to reveal himself as one of them and capture him. The infiltration was more widespread than he thought.
** "The Voice of Reason": A man appears before a government committee to warn them about alien infiltrators. They dismiss him as a nut. Suspecting the official who opposes him the loudest is an infiltrator, the man shoots and kills him, hoping to expose his alien nature. The official was human and a complete {{muggle}}, and the man is arrested. And it turns out the protagonist had managed to convince him that aliens could be a legitimate threat, and killed his ally. ''Nearly everyone else'' in the committee is an alien, and they silently thank the man for [[NiceJobBreakingItHero getting rid of that guy, allowing them to take full control and further their invasion plans]]. (And this was the ClipShow. ''Even the clip show has a nasty ending.'')
** "A Special Edition": A guy appears on a talk show to present evidence that the government is performing illegal cloning experiments. The government cuts off their signal and sends armed thugs into the studio. The guy, cast, and crew try to escape, but are eventually captured. A clone of the guy appears and gives a fraudulent report that "disproves" the guy's evidence. The clone mocks the protagonists, claiming that the masses are stupid sheep who believe anything they hear, so his fraudulent report is already making them forget the truth. The guy, cast, and crew are all shot to death by the clone.
** "Human Trials": A group of soldiers sign up for a top secret mission. To "weed out the wimps", the soldiers are placed in virtual reality simulations (the kind where you can feel everything) of battles, natural disasters, etc. Those who die, crack, or give up in the simulations are eliminated and sent home. In the end, only one soldier makes it. After the round of congratulations, he eagerly asks what his mission is. He is then informed that there was no mission; ForScience, they were looking for someone really tough so that they could use him as a guinea pig to test the limits of human endurance and willpower. He is forcibly plugged back into virtual reality and subjected to nightmarish tortures as the technicians and military officials look on with LackOfEmpathy.
** "Manifest Destiny": A spaceship investigates a distress call from an abandoned spaceship. While exploring it, the crew begins to grow paranoid and insane, one by one. The doctor tries to figure out what is going on, but is too late and succumbs as well. The alien virus that caused this is unknowingly sent to Earth. This does overlap with KarmicTwistEnding seeing how the virus was the result of [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters humanity destroying the aliens so they could colonize their homeworld for themselves,]] [[HistoryRepeats with the doctor comparing it to how the wars with Native Americans ultimately caused syphilis to be carried to Europe.]]
** "Final Appeal": A woman time travels to the future and is arrested because technology is banned. She goes on trial and tries to convince the leaders to bring technology back, because she has seen futures where humanity is screwed without technology. A second time traveler arrives with a nuclear bomb and threatens the leaders to keep technology banned, because he had seen futures where humanity ended up screwed over because of technology. After a long debate, the leaders decide to lift the ban and everyone seemingly convinces the second time traveler not to kill them and to return to his own time. He leaves...but leaves the bomb behind and it explodes, wiping out the city.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': Perhaps the best illustration of the difference between a KarmicTwistEnding and a cruel-twist ending are two episodes with virtually the same plot: a man manages to apparently become the last man on Earth, but cannot enjoy it. (In the second case the man finds he finally has time to read all the books he wants -- until he breaks his glasses.) It's the same twist in both episodes, but in "The Mind and the Matter", the man is a MisanthropeSupreme who wills everyone else away, making [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor his eventual fate karmic justice]]. In "Time Enough at Last", however, the man is a timid man who is ridiculed by his wife and boss for reading books, and who only survives a nuclear holocaust because he locked himself in a bank vault as the only way he could get some peace. In this case, the world screws him over just to be mean. Website/TheOtherWiki claims that he was being punished for [[LonersAreFreaks being antisocial]], and for daring to think that humanity being wiped out had a positive side. Make of that what you will.

** "A View Through The Window" has a farm surrounded by an impenetrable forcefield materialize in the desert. The military investigates, and finds that the farmers inside cannot see or hear them, while they can only see and not hear them. One soldier, depressed by the loss of his family, observes the farmers and begins to fall in love with a lovely woman among them who seems to be as sad and lonely as he is. The soldier notices that the forcefield goes down for brief periods at a time. Eventually, when the forcefield goes down, the soldier jumps into the farm, deciding there is nothing left for him in his original world and wanting to be with the woman. The inhabitants immediately transform into hideous monsters and tear him to pieces. His horrified comrades try to save him, but the forcefield goes back up before they can. The monsters then start testing the forcefield, waiting for it to go down again so they can escape to the outside world.
** "My So-Called Life and Death" focuses on a moody teenage girl who is stuck on vacation with her DysfunctionalFamily, including her [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling bratty]] PyroManiac little brother (who [[KarmaHoudini gets away with everything]]). The girl develops a crush on the handyman next door, but he doesn't seem to notice her at all (and, when she tries to touch him, passes right through her). She tries to tell her family that their neighbor is a ghost, but they insist there's no such thing as ghosts, and yell at her to stop ruining their vacation. Undeterred (and excited by the idea of romancing a ghost), the girl finally succeeds in making contact with the handyman...only for him to scream and run away in terror, because ''[[TomatoInTheMirror she]]'' [[TomatoInTheMirror is a ghost]]. Her brother set fire to the family vacation home one night, killing them all in their sleep; the handyman is the house's new owner, trying to repair the damage. The girl confronts her family, but they deny that it happened, with her mother angrily and fearfully demanding that she continue to uphold the charade that they're just a normal family on vacation. The episode ends as the girl sits down to lunch with her family, and her mother cheerfully exclaiming that she hopes their vacation lasts forever -- giving her daughter a hard look when she hesitates to agree. The entire family is trapped in a fantasy, unable to move on, because their matriarch can't face the reality of what's happened to them, or the role she played in it. What's worse, their daughter is stuck in the company of a family she not only can't stand, but now ''knows'' is responsible for her death.

** "Harmony" has a drifter who wanders into a town where music and singing is outlawed due to fear it will attract a monster. The drifter and a like-minded mother and child try to convince the townspeople this is nonsense, but they form an angry mob and attack them. Against all odds, the drifter manages to sing "Amazing Grace", and nothing happens. The townspeople joyously start singing and celebrating him as a hero for banishing their superstitions...then the monster shows up and kills them all.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': Perhaps the best illustration of the difference between a KarmicTwistEnding and a cruel-twist ending are two episodes with virtually the same plot: a man manages to apparently become the last man on Earth, but cannot enjoy it. (In the second case the man finds he finally has time to read all the books he wants -- until he breaks his glasses.) It's the same twist in both episodes, but in "The Mind and the Matter", the man is a MisanthropeSupreme who wills everyone else away, making [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor his eventual fate karmic justice]]. In "Time Enough at Last", however, the man is a timid man who is ridiculed by his wife and boss for reading books, and who only survives a nuclear holocaust because he locked himself in a bank vault as the only way he could get some peace. In this case, the world screws him over just to be mean. Wiki/TheOtherWiki claims that he was being punished for [[LonersAreFreaks being antisocial]], and for daring to think that humanity being wiped out had a positive side. Make of that what you will.

** Season 4 pulls this off again in a ''particularly'' cruel fashion with "Recap/BlackMirrorCrocodile". In a society where people's memories can be viewed by a device called an "adjuster," a woman starts a murder spree to erase all evidence of a crime she commited. As she's walking out of the house of the couple she recently killed, she comes across their infant son, and the [[WouldHurtAChild implications are clear.]] At the ending of the episode, which confirms she has indeed killed a ''baby'' to get away scot-free, it's revealed that the kid was ''blind.'' Meaning he wouldn't have seen anything incriminating her in the first place. And to make everything [[SerialEscalation even]] [[UpToEleven worse]], she killed all those people in vain anyway, because it turns out that the technology works on the family's ''guinea pig'' and the police were able to use its memories to track her down. ''Wow.''

** "My So-Called Life and Death" focuses on a moody teenage girl who is stuck on vacation with her DysfunctionalFamily, including her controlling mother, her [[BumblingDad meek, ineffectual father]], and her [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling bratty]] PyroManiac little brother (who [[KarmaHoudini gets away with everything]]). The girl develops a crush on the handyman next door, but he doesn't seem to notice her at all (and, when she tries to touch him, passes right through her). She tries to tell her family that their neighbor is a ghost, but they insist there's no such thing as ghosts, and yell at her to stop ruining their vacation. Undeterred (and excited by the idea of romancing a ghost), the girl finally succeeds in making contact with the handyman...only for him to scream and run away in terror, because ''[[TomatoInTheMirror she]]'' [[TomatoInTheMirror is a ghost]]. Her brother set fire to the family vacation home one night, killing them all in their sleep; the handyman is the house's new owner, trying to repair the damage. The girl confronts her family, but they deny that it happened, with her mother angrily and fearfully demanding that she continue to uphold the charade that they're just a normal family on vacation. The episode ends as the girl sits down to lunch with her family, and her mother cheerfully exclaiming that she hopes their vacation lasts forever -- giving her daughter a hard look when she hesitates to agree. The entire family is trapped in a fantasy, unable to move on, because their matriarch can't face the reality of what's happened to them, or the role she played in it. What's worse, their daughter is stuck in the company of a family she not only can't stand, but now ''knows'' is responsible for her death.

** "My So-Called Life and Death" focuses on a moody teenage girl who is stuck on vacation with her DysfunctionalFamily, including her controlling mother, her [[BumblingDad meek, ineffectual father]], and her [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling bratty]] PyroManiac little brother (who [[KarmaHoudini gets away with everything]]). The girl develops a crush on the handyman next door, but he doesn't seem to notice her at all (and, when she tries to touch him, passes right through her). She tries to tell her family that their neighbor is a ghost, but her mother insists there's no such thing as ghosts, and yells at her to stop ruining their vacation. Undeterred (and excited by the idea of romancing a ghost), the girl finally succeeds in making contact with the handyman -- only for him to scream and run away in terror, because ''[[TomatoInTheMirror she]]'' [[TomatoInTheMirror is the ghost]]. Her brother set fire to the family vacation home one night, killing them all in their sleep; the handyman is the house's new owner, trying to repair the damage. The girl confronts her family, but her brother denies that he's done anything wrong and her mother angrily and fearfully demands she continue to uphold the charade that they're a normal family on vacation. The episode ends as the girl sits down to lunch with her family, her mother cheerfully stating that she hopes their vacation lasts forever -- and giving her daughter a hard look when she hesitates to agree. The entire family is trapped in a fantasy, unable to move on, because their matriarch can't face the reality of what happened to them or the role she played in it. What's worse, their daughter is stuck in the company of a family she not only cannot stand, but now ''knows'' is responsible for her death.

** In one episode, a woman is sent back in time to kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler as a baby. She struggles with the reality of actually killing an infant, but in the end, jumps off a bridge with the child, killing them both. Little Adolf's nanny, unwilling to admit to her employers what happens, replaces him with another baby. The implication is that this whole action [[StableTimeLoop was part of our timeline]], and the replacement baby was the [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct actual Hitler from our history]].

** "Recap/BlackMirrorPlaytest" features a man participating in a BrainComputerInterface test in order to generate a properly scary experience for a horror game. After experiencing his worst {{Adult Fear}}s and two fakeouts involving him thinking he left the game, he's finally taken out and sent home, only to find his mother is showing symptoms of Alzheimer's, one of the many fears explored in the game. He breaks down in tears upon realizing this. You'd think it would end there, but it gets worse: He never started the game in the first place. The man died within 0.04 seconds of strapping himself in due to leaving his cellphone turned on. The staff notes he spent his last moments convulsing and calling out to his mother.

** "My Old House" has a young girl named Alice moving away from her [[GeniusLoci sentient house]], who's also her only best friend since she has a fragile relationship with [[WellDoneSonGuy her parents]]. She soon runs away from her family to live with the living building forever so she can finally be happy, but she soon sees that her own parents are [[AdultFear desperately searching for their missing girl]], proving that they do indeed love her. Upon realizing the mistake she made and knowing that her romanticized life with her house won't be as fantastic as she thought it was, Alice finally parts ways with her living house peacefully. Unfortunately, it turns out that the [[{{Yandere}} house]] refuses to let her leave and murders her ([[AndIMustScream possibly]]) by absorbing her body within its walls so she'll be a permanent part of it forever. Alice's parents never find their daughter and [[FromBadToWorse a new little girl moves into the house]] as the episode closes out with the House implying that it'll kill again.

** "Neighborhood Watch" is particularly effective, as it relies on realistic AdultFear rather than supernatural elements. A close-knit community is sent a letter with a warning that the newest occupant of the neighborhood is a dangerous child molester. A father, seeking to defend his daughter, eventually kills the man, and the other neighbors back him up...and then a second letter arrives, telling everyone that the first letter was a mistake, and the murdered man was completely innocent.

** There was the time travel episode where a woman decides to kill an evil dictator as an infant by posing as his nanny. The baby was UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, and she succeeds. However, another nanny who saw what happened replaces the baby with another child, the implication being that the new child is the Hitler we had to deal with.

** There was the time travel episode where a woman decides to kill an evil dictator as an infant by posing as his nanny. The baby was UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, and she succeeds. However, another nanny who saw what happened replaces the baby with another child, the implication being that the new child is the Hitler we had to deal with. It would have been a good episode, if it weren't for a very bad case of CriticalResearchFailure: the baby Adolf is the cherished son of his proud and well-off father, who is able to afford a nanny in the first place; the real Hitler's father was a civil servant, he didn't have a nanny, and the pair were not close.

** "Stay Tuned, We'll Be Right Back" - a man digs up a old radio that allows him to send messages back in time, saving his father from a fatal mission in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII...and assuring an Axis victory.